The present disclosure relates to an actuating member for making a medical elongated member perform a predetermined action, and a medical apparatus equipped with the actuating member.
In the medical field, an elongated member having flexibility is generally used as a medical apparatus for access for performing administration of medicine into a living body, suction or injection of various fluids, introduction of other medical apparatus into the living body, or the like. For example, where an elongated member is used for introduction of other medical apparatus, prior to the introduction of the medical apparatus, the elongated member is inserted into a lumen (a blood vessel, a body cavity, or the like) of the living body, and is guided to a target area, such as an area to be treated and its peripheral area. In order to appropriately guide the elongated member to the target area in during such use, it is often necessary to introduce the elongated member along a curved path like the lumen of the living body. For this reason, the elongated member may include an actuating member capable of performing a bending operation by a user's proximal operation when the elongated member is used.
As techniques related to this, Japanese Patent Publication No. JP-A-2008-142199 describes an actuating member including a push/pull member connected to an elongated member, a pulley around which the push/pull member is wound, a handle for rotationally actuating the pulley, and an endoscope into which the actuating member is assembled. In this actuating member, the handle is arranged on a base end side of the endoscope and rotates around an axis orthogonal to the axial direction of the elongated member, thereby winding the push/pull member to perform a bending action.
In the actuating member of JP-A-2008-142199, the push/pull member is arranged so as to be wound around the pulley and an action direction in which the push/pull member is pushed/pulled is converted from a straight direction into a circumferential direction for bending. Therefore, a relatively rigid small wire or the like is used as the push/pull member. For this reason, there is a possibility that a push/pull force cannot be reliably transmitted to the elongated member via this wire.
Additionally, since it is necessary to wind the wire around the pulley with good followability, there are problems in that the pulley must be large, which causes the entire apparatus to be large.